Tuesday, January 8, 2008

TV?

Robin and I try hard not to watch a lot of TV, and when we do, we like to record and watch shows without the commercials as much as possible. I've installed a TV card in our computer that records our shows and we can play them back on the TV with the commercials edited out. I call it "poor man's Tivo".

With T's pending arrival, we're now realizing that we have little to no "kid-friendly" programming on the computer. I've got a ton of hard drive space available, so I'd like to start recording and archiving shows now so that we have things we can watch when T is around.

Apart from family-friendly programs, we're also looking for programs for kids that T might like. Robin and I are part of the original Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers generation, so we're a little out of touch with what kids are into these days.

7 comments:

As a preschool teacher I highly recommend "Little Einsteins" and "The Wiggles". Also, I heard from my best friend whose son is bilingual in Japanese and English that her favorite new program is called, "The Sunshine Road", which happens to be sponsored by Bright Horizons, the corporation that owns our preschool.

My son Loves little einsteins, Doodle boops, The wiggles, The higgly town heros (its where every day people are heros..the mail man, the police officer, the farmer) but his favorites of all is Mickey mouse club house. He loves to bust a move to The hot dog song on that show... Your thinking I'm crazy but you'll see.

Before our adopted son Jacob from Vietnam we watched no kids shows. Disney channel did not exist then. Love reading your blog we are thinking adoption again depending on finances... maybe Thailand or Philliphines.. see our blog

Hi Robin (and Kyle), It is your December referral cohort Amy Holland here! Ahhh...the media question! Like you, we try not to watch very much tv either. We have 2 sons who are 7 and 4 and we did not have them watching any tv at all until 18 months or so. I think the American Academy of Pediatrics (or whatever it is called) actually recommends no tv until the age of 2...? Once they started watching a little bi a little bit, PBS worked great for us (no commercials) and then there are a few shows on Disney Channel that are appropriate for little ones.(I think many of the good ones were mentioned in the previous comments) It's funny, you mentionned "Mr. Rogers", my older son used to come home from kindergarten and watch a Mr. Rogers rerun on PBS every once in a while! Ha! Good luck!

We love PBS at our house and the channel Sprout (a PBS all preschool channel). Jesse ends up watching what Ian watched but seems extra captivated by Word World (where letter build the images) and It's A Big Big World (about a sloth and his friends in the a giant tree). Most morning programing on the kids channels are for preschoolers and toddlers.

Hi Kyle & Robin-Our kids are 3.5 and almost 2. We try to limit TV too and go through phases of doing great and not so great. I really like PBS because I hate my kids seeing the commercials and because some of those shows seem a little mored educational. The two show on that our daughter is really into right now are Caillou on PBS and Little Bill (I think it's produced by Bill Cosby). Both seem really age appropriate and deal with issues she may face right now. Also they are really cross cultural which I love. If someone offers to buy you a "nice" baby gift - I HIGHLY recommend the signing time videos. Our kids love to learn signing and these videos are amazing- and have really helped calm the tantrum years because my kids can communicate early. I'm thinking they would be great as kids transition from one language to another. Hope this helps.

Hi Robin,Wow! People have really commented about the TV thing. We too go through phases of reducing TV time. I actually have 3 cartoon watchers - Kara, Will, and....Joel. He loves cartoons. As I am typing it's Sat. morning and Kara is showing me the "art set" on TV that she wants. Ugh, it's frustrating. Joel loves the Boomerang channel. It's not really appropriate for kids until around 4. It's all of the old cartoons that we watched when we were kids - The Flintstones, Pink Panther, Justice League, to name a few.When my kids were little they LOVED the Wiggles and Veggie Tales. There's also a Christian video series called Praise Baby. It's a lot like Einstein. I would play it when I was trying to cook dinner.

well we are not big TV watchers with D and while he was a baby we mainly stuck with DVDs - baby einstein mostly, then he turned 1.5 and Thomas was exciting (we also did DVD and kept it on the spanish track) once a week...now we do little einstein & Go Diego Go -actually right now is Potty Power! he could watch hours of TV so we limit to 40min (2 Go Diego Go episodes on DVD back to back - also on the spanish track).

now I work so I our time together we like to spend it playing for the most part so naturally his tv time is limited because of that - now when I start staying at home with W & D for the next year his tv viewing may increase - probably add backyardigans (our friend's son loves it) and sesame street - which means we might need to finally get cable!!! I know I will need the extra breaks!!!